Views on how to manage economies differ greatly from country to country. The UK has a vibrant financial press, which has an important influence on economic policy and where John Maynard Keynes’ views on fiscal stimulus receive a prominent airing.

His theories that governments can spend their way out of recessions were undermined by stagflation in the 1970s but have recently experienced something of a renaissance. But among the major economies, only Japan, the UK and the US have embraced massive public sector deficits to moderate the current recessions. Elsewhere, Keynesian theories are ignored or even, as in Germany, scorned.